Nicole (Manske) Briscoe: Former Roscoe resident lands job as a host on ESPN

Sunday

Jul 20, 2014 at 5:00 AM

By Doug GoodmanRegister Star Media

Nicole (Manske) Briscoe has made a life for herself in auto racing — not behind the wheel but in front of the TV camera.

The former Roscoe resident is the host of NASCAR-related programming on ESPN after a successful TV career reporting on motorsports for other regional and national networks.

And she met her future husband while reporting on auto racing.

When she lived in northern Illinois, the 1998 Hononegah High School graduate was best known for earning the title of Illinois Miss Teen and competing in the Miss Teen USA pageant.

Briscoe then attended Northern Illinois University and worked part time at WREX-TV in Rockford.

After graduation, she was hired as a general assignment reporter for WANE-TV in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and in 2004 moved on to WISH-TV in Indianapolis, where she covered the Indianapolis 500, the United States Grand Prix, the Indianapolis Colts and the Indiana Pacers.

She also became a pit reporter for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Radio Network during that time.

While covering the Indy 500, she was reunited with a former Hononegah classmate who was also making a name for herself in racing — Danica Patrick.

The SPEED Channel, a national motorsports network, hired Briscoe as co-host of a racing news program in 2006.

After a stellar two-year run with SPEED, she was hired by ESPN.

“If you are going to cover a sport and have the opportunity to work for the company that does it best, it is really exciting,” she said of ESPN in a Rockford Register Star interview in 2013. “And I’m having a ton of fun with it so far.”

Briscoe is the host of “NASCAR Countdown,” which airs before all NASCAR Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series race telecasts on ESPN networks.

She also is a host and reporter for “NASCAR Now,” ESPN’s daily news and information show.

She interviews the top drivers each week and even some people not involved with the sport. In 2009, she had a five-minute, live interview with President Barack Obama when “NASCAR Now” aired from the White House.

“This has probably been the most surreal day of my career,” she said in a phone interview with the Register Star two hours after the show. “Never ever did I think I would be in a position to interview the president of the United States.

“It truly is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Obama sat down with her and co-host Brad Daugherty to discuss NASCAR’s importance to the world of sports, the American family and the auto industry.

“I don’t know if he was very knowledgeable about NASCAR (before the interview), but he definitely has a great interest in sports,” she said. “NASCAR is on his radar now, so it made an impact today.”

She had another life-changing event in 2009 when she married IndyCar Series driver Ryan Briscoe on Dec. 19 in Maui, Hawaii. They picked Hawaii because they said it was halfway between her family’s home in Roscoe and his family’s home in Australia.

They settled down in Mooresville, North Carolina, with their three dogs and two cats and the family’s newest addition, daughter Finley.

Their baby was born Dec. 5, 2013, which was ideal timing for their auto-racing schedule as it fell during the NASCAR and IndyCar off seasons.